Okay, so I’m not your so called “beauty queen” or winner of the “Most Unique Looking Girl of

The Year” award. I’m just an average teenage girl. And when it comes to boys, my half dozen other

“friends” have me beat by a landslide. That’s why when the new boy moved into our neighborhood, I

thought nothing of it.

It was a typical August afternoon and summer was slowly but surely closing its eyes for

hibernation while fall dusted off its thrown and prepared to rein ruler of the seasons once again. “But

we go to the docks pretty much every afternoon,” I complained while lying on my newly vacuumed

bedroom floor. My friend Krista was on the other end of the line begging once again to go do something

pointless with her as a last stitch effort to juice out as much summer as we could before school started

up again.

“Oh, c’mon,” she replied back in a whining kind of tone, “there should be lots of people there

this time!” What those words really meant was that there was a miniscule chance that others might

possibly show up so we weren’t swimming in the murky lake by ourselves; which was usually the case in

most trips to the dock. I wanted to make up an excuse or some logical story about catching a deadly

virus quite suddenly and wouldn’t be able to make it. But I ended up replying with the only sentence I

could conjure up at the time.

“Fine then. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Super!” came the squeal form the other end. “See you in a jiffy!”